Well-Being and Time
A full defense is presented of the thesis that there are two orders of value, one incommensurably superior to the other. To see this, we must realize that the goods that comprise well-being do not diminish in value over time. Plato was therefore right to hold that we should want to possess the good eternally. Lives typically contain a combination of good and bad; a whole life should be counted good on balance by aggregating—adding the good and subtracting the bad. No period of life inherently has less prudential value than any other. Narrative factors should figure in our assessment of how well a life goes only when they affect our experience. There is some truth in Goethe’s line: “Only the present is our happiness” (Faust, Part Two). Aristotle’s notion that well-being needs a “complete” life contains both insights and errors.